The House Article | How A Secret Government Report Delayed Leeds’ Long-Awaited Trams

West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin insists mass transit ‘will be a tram’ (Credit: Milo Chandler / Alamy)

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It looked as if the stars were finally in alignment. Leeds had been waiting decades for a tram network of the kind enjoyed in Sheffield, Manchester and Nottingham, and in July 2024 it looked as if one was closer than ever before.

West Yorkshire’s Labour mayor, Tracy Brabin, had just won re-election promising to start work on the scheme and her party had now taken office nationally on a mission to “forge ahead” with new infrastructure.

To top it off, Leeds now even had local MP Rachel Reeves in post as Chancellor. With £2.1bn committed to it in June 2025, the project’s future looked bright.

But just days before Christmas, an announcement was made. Brabin confirmed that following “an independent review” held in September 2025, the scheme was now being progressed at a slower pace. Instead of services starting in the mid-2030s, they will instead begin in the late 2030s.

The reason for this was that while Brabin’s West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) had previously been progressing the business case and the route planning simultaneously, they had now agreed to take a “sequential” approach by submitting the business case first.

The announcement did not make clear why the review was held, other than it being “part of the usual process for projects of this size and scale”.

And while calling the review “independent” might suggest its authors have nothing to do with those funding the scheme, it quickly emerged that the report was in fact written by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (Nista), a joint unit of the Treasury and Cabinet Office.

Speculation mounted that the project was in trouble. Leeds has been disappointed not just by a litany of failed plans for trams and trolleybuses over the last 40 years but also by Boris Johnson’s 2021 decision to the axe the city’s High Speed 2 route.

Admitting that people in West Yorkshire have become “cynical” about such promises, Brabin insisted the new timeline would “offer certainty for the scheme”, as ministers had “committed to working with us to cut red tape and put tracks on the ground as quickly as possible”.

Tom Forth, a Leeds-based expert in transport data who has been a vocal advocate for the tram, was not convinced: “We have had about eight delays before to this type of thing in Leeds. All of the previous delays have resulted in cancellation… Maybe we’ll get a hovercraft to Mars and we’ll call it ‘West Yorkshire Tram’, I don’t know, but it’s not good.”

A Leeds Labour activist meanwhile tells The House: “Leeds residents think it’s cancelled. It doesn’t matter who I speak to. If it’s not somebody hyper-involved in local government policy or transport policy, [they think] it’s not happening.”

Both WYCA and the government have refused Freedom of Information requests for the Nista review, with the former citing an exemption to protect “the free and frank exchange of views” between officials.

The House, however, has obtained a copy and can for the first time reveal its contents. The 45-page document sets out 19 separate risks relating to the project’s governance, assurance and planning, but one key recurring theme is the extent to which WYCA is said to have allowed the scheme to be shaped “around a political agenda rather than a recognised programmatic approach”.

The review specifically refers to Brabin’s 2024 manifesto pledge to get “spades in the ground by 2028”, which is the year that she intends to stand for a third term in office.

One source who has been following the project closely says: “They were rushing so much to try and get something approved, to meet the political timescale of doing something in this mayor’s mandate by 2028. The whole point of the HS2 learning is you’re not supposed to do that, because that’s what leads you to make bad decisions.”

The review says of Brabin’s 2028 pledge: “This date has been driving the planning for WYMT [West Yorkshire Mass Transit] and while it is vitally important to drive pace into delivery and also challenge current ways of thinking, there are elements of Managing Public Money, that government needs to adhere to.

“This has generated a tension for WYMT between planning a major project in line with current Green Book Business Case Approval and seeking to achieve a manifesto pledge.

“Lessons from other major projects have identified that options appraisal for investment, robust project planning and risk management are critical ingredients for successful delivery and should not be compromised for unrealistic milestones.”

It cautions that there is a risk of “political embarrassment if there was a large disconnect between a lauded ‘spades in the ground’ date and the start of actual work” and warns that money could be wasted, saying: “The risk of nugatory spend is high.”

The likely cost of a Bus Rapid Transit mode is significantly less than for trams

In addition to concerns about staff capacity in both WYCA and the Department for Transport (DfT), the review also highlights the need for WYCA to take a “mode-agnostic” view of the project. In plain English, the government has not actually said it will fund a tram system in West Yorkshire. It has said it will fund a “mass transit” system, which might consist of trams, but might not.

The review found there was a “clear mantra” among those working on the scheme that “the term WYMT is synonymous with ‘tram’” and that “anything less than” a tram would be considered “second-class”.

Nista said that while “it may be the case that trams are the right modal choice”, the review team were “concerned that the lack of unbiased thinking about the best solution for delivering the objectives has hampered the development of an evidence-based demonstration of the most effective and efficient scheme”.

It adds: “There is a need to build the case for trams which has not been completed. This is particularly important because the likely cost of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) mode is significantly less than for trams and the BRT benefits:cost ratio is significantly better.”

Staff working on the project told Nista that trams “will be transformational, more resilient and more acceptable to the public” than a bus network, but Nista asserted that “the evidence for this has not yet been developed”.

Martin Hamilton, CEO of the Leeds Civic Trust, tells The House that trams would attract a higher ridership than buses, as “people who wouldn’t think about getting a bus do consider getting a tram”. He adds that as well as offering increased speed, trams would also bring wider economic benefits.

“If you look at some of the examples within the UK, but also internationally, you can see how it’s possible to use a tram route as a way of bringing brownfield sites into play in terms of housebuilding and in terms of industry along the route. It can really act as a catalyst for regeneration in a way that simply running a bus down a road just won’t do.”

WYCA has consulted on several different possible alignments for the scheme’s initial two routes.

The first would run from central to south Leeds, and could potentially call at Elland Road, the home of Leeds United. The club is expanding its stadium in a £650m redevelopment project, with LUFC director Peter Lowy suggesting mass transit could make a big difference for fans on match days.

The other route would link Leeds with Bradford, despite the fact that the two cities are already connected by train.

The House understands that, at the time of the review, WYCA’s preferred alignment for this second route involved running the tram on main roads between the two cities, because that would enable planning consent to be granted most quickly. But this would have caused significant disruption to traffic during construction, and would also not have enabled much new housing development compared with options which took the tram off-road.

A source familiar with the scheme said that by taking this approach, the mayor had been putting “political expediency in front of what’s probably in the best interests of taxpayers, bluntly”.

In a February letter, rail minister Lord Hendy told Brabin: “It is important to carefully consider the cost, effects and benefits/disbenefits of ‘street running’ vs utilising reserved track where available or running through brownfield land.”

The Nista review similarly warns that “there are risks in committing to a specific route and mode before full approval and which may not be supported by all senior stakeholders”, in addition to “the risk of nugatory spend, litigation and public embarrassment for WYCA if works are started out of sequence and there is a subsequent need for reversal”.

A WYCA source told The House no decisions had yet been made on routes.

Since the review, Brabin has refused to resile from her manifesto pledge, insisting that spades will still go in the ground in 2028, though she now specifies these will enable “preparatory works”.

WYCA’s website explains: “This will not involve laying tracks, but it will prevent issues in any new developments or on our road network that could cause problems for the project, helping to advance future delivery.”

The mayor has also doubled down on her claim that mass transit will mean a tram network, despite the review’s findings on that question. “It’s going to be a tram,” she told WYCA’s scrutiny committee in March this year, adding that the Chancellor has made clear her support for trams.

But the scheme’s business case is being submitted to the DfT, not the Treasury. Asked just a few weeks ago whether she could rule out a bus-only scheme in Leeds, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said that while Brabin was making the case for trams “very powerfully”, it is the DfT’s job to ensure public funds are “spent wisely”.

Brabin told the committee: “We are now in a process where we have to prove it can’t be a bus – and that’s fine, we’ll do that, because it will be a tram. My approach is, the case has been proven that light rail is a solution to connectivity in Manchester, in Nottingham, in Birmingham, in Edinburgh, in all of the cities across Europe [that have trams].”

A WYCA spokesperson told The House: “We have bold ambitions for West Yorkshire and that includes addressing long-standing connectivity issues that are holding our region back.

“Beginning preparatory construction works by 2028 has been an ambition for the combined authority for some time because the people of West Yorkshire have waited long enough for this investment. Delivery of major infrastructure projects in the UK is too slow, and in the spirit of devolution we want to innovate to deliver mass transit more quickly.

“Nista’s predecessor body, the National Infrastructure Commission, set out clearly in 2023 that Leeds needs a tram. A review at this stage of a project of this scale is completely normal, and the majority of its recommendations have already been addressed by the combined authority.”

The DfT said: “While we do not comment on details of leaked reports, the government fully supports mayor Brabin’s ambitions for a world-class mass transit system for West Yorkshire. We look forward to receiving WYCA’s initial business case for the project later this year.”